Just One Trip
by Brownbug
Summary: Kiriban for SlytherinPrincess123.  Prequel to "One Moment in Time", set after "Waters of Mars". So why did the Doctor name a galaxy Alison?  Maybe because some days, no matter how hard he tries, not everybody lives. 10th Doctor, OC.
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Doctor Who or anything related to it.**

**SUMMARY: Set after the episode "Waters of Mars" and before "The End of Time". Tejana, the Doctor's daughter, is living in Cardiff and working with Torchwood, when her father turns up unexpectedly and asks her to go with him in the TARDIS for "just one trip". But travelling with the Doctor is never that simple and, as usual, things spiral out of control. So what exactly were the Doctor and Tejana doing when the 456 came to Earth, leaving Jack, Gwen and Ianto to face the alien threat on their own? And why did the Doctor name a galaxy 'Alison'? Maybe because, some days, no matter how hard he tries, not everybody lives. This is that story.**

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><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is a prequel to my "One Moment in Time" series. However, since it is a prequel, new readers can probably read this one first if they wish, without getting lost - so go ahead!<strong>

**This story is written as a "thank you" kiriban for the amazing SlytherinPrincess13, who is an incredibly talented artist and has very kindly done some stunning artwork for "The Master's Rose" - it's a gorgeous picture of the Master and Tejana together. The link is on my profile page, so PLEASE, go and check it out, you won't be sorry. And PLEASE leave her some feedback, either on here or on her DA page, because she is a young artist just starting out and really needs to be told how talented she is.**

**Thanks also to Aietradaea, who chatted through the plot of this fic with me and made some terrific suggestions! It will be a multi-chapter ficlet, in the same sort of short chapter style as "A Deadly Assassin", (if you have read that one), so it would be great if you could follow along! If it all works out, it may also end up being a series, who knows? Hope you enjoy!  
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><p><strong>CHAPTER ONE<strong>

Wearily, Tejana sat on the edge of her bed, trying to summon enough energy to peel off her clothes and climb under the covers. She had not slept for seven days and her eyelids kept slamming shut from sheer exhaustion. In the far off distance, she could hear a clock tower striking the hour – two o'clock in the morning, the darkest and most depressing part of the night. Down below her high-rise apartment building, the streets of Cardiff were wreathed in a chilling mist, drifting and curling through the city like insubstantial grey fingers.

It had been a very long week. The Rift had been unusually active and Torchwood – or what was left of it – had been flat out tracking down and dealing with various alien infestations. Tejana rubbed tiredly at her temples, trying to ease the persistent headache that throbbed there. Owen and Tosh had been dead for nearly four months now, but the team still could not seem to get back their previously smooth working rhythm. It was as though two essential cogs had dropped out of their machinery, cogs that could not be replaced. Tejana couldn't decide which of them she missed most – loud, brash, sarcastic, confident Owen, who had both annoyed and amused her in equal measure; or methodical, softly-spoken, logical, brilliant Tosh, whose quiet strength had subtly supported the team in ways they had not even realised until she was gone.

Resolutely, Tejana turned her mind away from her dead friends. The loss was still too raw and it hurt too much, especially in the lonely silence of the night. That was the worst part about leaving The Hub and coming home to sleep – having to be on her own. Gwen went home to her husband Rhys, while Jack and Ianto had each other. But Tejana had no-one. She sat perfectly still, listening, hearing nothing at all. The emptiness of the apartment seemed to press around her like a black hole. She sighed deeply. It was back again, that aching void inside her that she could never fill, the strange restlessness that always drove her onwards, forever seeking something that was missing, something that she couldn't find. For a while, working at Torchwood had seemed to help, but now she was getting itchy feet again, that feeling that something..._someone_...was out there waiting for her, if only she looked hard enough and long enough...

Tejana shook herself. She was tired, she was being stupid. After all, she had been looking for nearly six hundred years, ever since she had first looked into the Untempered Schism – there was nothing more out there. And right now, Jack and his team needed her. Now was not the time to go wandering again. Stripping off her clothes, she snuggled down into bed, both hearts inexplicably heavy. She was so tired that she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

Less than two hours later, she sat bolt upright, her mind fighting to focus as it was forcibly dragged from sleep. Something had awakened her, some sort of noise, something that didn't belong...or had she just been dreaming? Her mouth went dry, her body tight with tension as her senses told her that the emptiness within the apartment had disappeared. She was no longer alone.

But then, as the fog of sleep cleared from her brain, her limbs relaxed and a small, affectionate smile curved her lips. Jumping out of bed, she wrapped herself in her soft towelling robe and padded towards the bedroom door. Pushing it open, she blinked owlishly in the flood of white moonlight pouring through the kitchen window. Sure enough, as her vision adjusted, she saw a blue police box standing in the corner of the living room, casting a long narrow shadow across the carpeted floor.

"'Ello!" said a cheerful voice.

A man was tilted back in one of her kitchen chairs, his lanky frame dressed in a blue-pinstriped suit, a pair of grubby red Converse sneakers plonked casually on her polished oak table. He had brown, spiky hair, long sideburns, intelligent brown eyes and a wide grin. A long brown coat had been tossed over the back of another chair.

"Hello, Doctor," she greeted him, sleepily pushing her unruly black hair out of her eyes. "What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

He sat up straight, a mock expression of hurt plastered across his face. "Can't a father drop in to see his daughter unannounced without there automatically being something wrong?"

"When it's you and me? Um, no, not usually," she responded wryly.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" he asked, indicating her robe.

"Yeah, me sleeping, as it happens," she replied, coming over to the table to sit beside him. "It is nearly four in the morning, you know."

He looked pointedly behind her at the darkened door of her bedroom. "I mean, if Jack's here, I could just..."

Tejana rolled her eyes. "Jack's not here. He's probably tucked up very cosily with Ianto, right now. You are so obvious, you know that? How many times do I have to tell you that there's nothing going on between me and Jack before you believe me?"

The Doctor simply grinned, a virtual picture of innocence. "At least once more!"

"You know, some people would get sick of being so impossible, but I have to give you credit, you just keep on keeping on!" she said tartly.

"So...how about a trip in the TARDIS, then?" he asked in a bright tone, jumping to his feet and pacing around the room, his hands jammed in his pockets like an eager small boy. "You up for it?"

She stared at him in bewilderment, her eyes narrowed as she tried to fathom what was behind his abrupt request. "What?"

"You...me...the TARDIS...flying around the Universe," he replied, speaking slowly and loudly as though she was intellectually impaired. "Just the two of us, like old times. Father and daughter, last of the Time Lords, all that stuff. It'll be brilliant!"

"Just the two of us?" she queried. "Where's everyone else? You had a TARDIS full of people when Jack and I left with Mickey and Martha."

"They left too," he said curtly, a brooding look in his eyes. "Sarah Jane went back to her son. I left Rose and the clone back in the parallel universe, with Jackie. And Donna...her mind was burning. I had to wipe her memory and take her home to Chiswick. I've been travelling on my own ever since."

Tejana could hear the undercurrent of pain in his voice, an eerie echo of the devastating loneliness she had been feeling earlier. Leaving Donna behind had obviously hurt him very badly. And to lose Rose again, for the second time...a wave of sympathy rushed though her. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

The Doctor shrugged, the movement hunched and tense, as though his shoulders were too tight. "Well...it's probably for the best. A bit of solitude never hurts, you know. Helps to clear the head!"

His daughter watched him keenly. She would never use the psychic link to intrude where she was not invited, but even without it, she could still sense the unusually turbulent rise and fall of his emotions. There was something more, she could feel it. Some desperate need had driven him here tonight, seeking the comfort of her company, some hidden wound deep inside.

"What happened, Doctor?" she asked gently. "Why are you really here?"

For a moment, he said nothing and she wondered if he was going to answer. But then he retraced his steps back to the chair and sat down again opposite her, his head in his hands. "I did some things..." he said, his voice not much more than a choked whisper. "I was wrong. I should never have...I went too far."

"What things?"

"I went to Mars. 21 November 2059, Bowie Base One. Captain Adelaide Brooke and her team. It was a fixed point in time. They were supposed to die. I should have left. I was going to, I really, really was, I tried, I walked away...but I could hear them dying, over the comm-unit in my suit." His face twisted in pain and grief, his eyes unseeing as he relived it all again. "All I could think about was that we were the last – you and me, the last of the Time Lords. It's all gone now, all of it, forever. They're all dead. There's no-one left to care about maintaining fixed points in time, no-one but us. All at once, I just felt this...rage, this bitter, all-consuming _fury_. So I turned back. And I saved them, because I could, because I had that power, that _right_. I took them back to Earth in the TARDIS. And I was so proud of myself. I wasn't just a survivor any more, I was the winner – I was the Time Lord Victorious, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Bringer of Darkness - there was nothing I couldn't do, I had beaten Time itself! I actually expected them to be _grateful_."

Compassion twisted her hearts. "And they weren't?"

His eyes filled with tears. "Adelaide Brooke – _human_ Adelaide Brooke - knew better than I did. She took her own life, to preserve the time-line, to ensure the future of the Earth. Instead of allowing that brave woman to die as the hero she deserved to be, I manipulated her into shooting herself, just to feed my overwhelming ego."

Tejana didn't know what to say to him, she had no words. His utter anguish seemed to shimmer in the air between them. Hesitantly, she reached out and put her hands over his, trying to give him some comfort, soothing him with the warmth of her touch. His fingers closed tightly around hers, almost desperately.

"And the more I thought about it, you know the thing that frightened me most?" he continued hoarsely.

"What?"

"I sounded like _him_. That need to dominate, to control everything, to have the ultimate power over life and death - '_The laws of Time are mine and they will obey me'_, that's what I said. Those are _his_ words, not mine."

Tejana felt a shiver pass over her skin. She didn't need to be told who he was talking about. _The Master_. The only other Time Lord to survive the Great War. The Time Lord who had died rather than regenerate, out of hatred and spite for the Doctor.

"You don't...you don't still blame yourself for his death, do you?" she asked quietly, not really wanting to hear the answer.

He gave a short bark of bitter laughter. "Why not? I couldn't save him, any more than I could save any of the others."

"Some people won't allow themselves to be saved," she told him, her voice taut and brittle. "It was his choice."

The Doctor shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder if he ever really had a choice, once he looked into the Untempered Schism. Those drums in his head...I should have helped him back then, when we were kids, back on Gallifrey. But instead I left him behind and now he's dead. How is that not my fault?"

Tejana closed her eyes, the headache pulsing through her brain again as she unwillingly remembered - _that hard, lean body against hers; the hot, disturbing desire in those brown eyes; his mouth, so close to hers, so very close..._Abruptly, she pulled her hands away from her father and got to her feet, heading into the tiny kitchen.

"I'll make us a cup of tea," she said over her shoulder. "I think we could both do with one."

She knew she was being a coward, running away from the conversation, but she really didn't want to talk about the Master. He was dead. She was glad. End of story.

"Thank goodness for tea," the Doctor responded wryly, running his hands over his face, already pulling himself together, as if he was slightly ashamed of his emotional outburst. "I love tea - brilliant stuff! What would the Universe do without tea? I'm so glad I wasn't born before they invented tea."

She brought over two steaming cups and put them carefully on the table. He took a big slurp of his tea and grinned at her again. "Look at you," he said teasingly, as if the previous emotion-filled moments had never happened. "You've gone all human on me."

Grateful for the change of subject, she retorted, "I have not."

"Oh, you have!" he insisted. "Cups of tea. A real job with Torchwood. A snug little flat. I bet you've even got a mortgage."

"Well, you'd be wrong, Doctor Smarty-pants," she answered in a lofty tone. "Torchwood bought this place for me outright. No mortgage."

"What about your fridge? I bet you've got mouldy cheese in your fridge. Humans _always_ have mouldy cheese in their fridge," he continued, jumping up and crossing across to her stainless steel refrigerator. With a flourish, he pulled open the door, revealing the limited and rather pathetic contents, his eyes lighting up with triumph. "Ah ha! See, I told you. Mouldy cheese!"

Laughing despite herself, Tejana slammed the fridge door closed. "You really are impossible!"

"It's a gift!" he said complacently. Then the merriment left his eyes as he looked steadily down into her face. "So...are you coming? In the TARDIS?"

Tejana swallowed hard. With both of her hearts, she wished she could say yes. But she couldn't, could she? She had responsibilities. People were depending on her. "I...can't."

"Oh, go on, just one trip!" the Doctor urged. "What can it hurt?"

"No, really, I can't. With Owen and Tosh dead, Torchwood is stretched far too thin. They need me, Doctor. Jack needs me. I just can't leave them right now."

For a moment, he just stared down at her. Then he nodded with a sad smile. "Of course. I understand. Silly of me, I suppose. Well...I suppose I'd better get on, let you get some more sleep." He kissed her quickly on the forehead. "Thanks for listening. And for the tea. I'll see you again soon."

Picking up his coat, he gave her a wave and strode towards the TARDIS, his tall, thin figure somehow lonely in the moonlight. Tejana thought of how empty the flat had seemed before he arrived, how drained and lifeless it would be all over again, after his vibrant presence had departed.

"Doctor, wait!" she cried.

He turned back, his eyebrows raised inquiringly.

"It'd be just one trip, right?"

He nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Definitely. Just one trip."

"And you'll get me back here before I'm due to start work at the Hub tomorrow?"

"Absolutely. Perfectly on time. No-one will even know you've been gone. Promise!"

She sighed. "I've heard that before. I must be crazy, but all right. Just one trip. Let me get changed and I'll come with you."

The Doctor beamed, his entire face alight with child-like delight.

"But I'm leaving a note for Jack, just in case," she added warningly. "I know you too well."

"Nonsense!" he replied, waving his hand in a dismissive fashion. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Famous last words," she muttered, reaching for a pen and paper anyway. "Like I said, I've heard that before."

Shortly thereafter, the quiet flat echoed with the wheezing sound of the departing TARDIS engines and the blue police box disappeared, leaving the vacant living room to the silence of the night and the soft, uninterrupted radiance of the moonlight. On the table, anchored by the Doctor's half-drunk cup of tea, was a note.

"_Dear Jack. Gone for a quick trip with the Doctor. Don't worry, back soon. Love Tejana. XXX."_

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><p><strong>Another Author's Note: Don't forget to check out Slytherin-Princess13's stunning fan-art<strong> **and please make sure you give her some feedback, you will make us both very happy**** XXX.**_  
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	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note:**

**Hello! Thanks to the people who reviewed the first chapter:- Romana-II, SlytherinPrincess123, tree1138, Aietradaea, padmay97, MayFairy and KlinicallyInsaneKoschei.**

**Special thanks to Aietradaea and tree1138 who took the time to encourage SlytherinPrincess123 on her amazing artwork. I think encouragement is a bit like karma - the more you give to other people, the more you get back yourself when you need it most. That's just the balance of the Universe!  
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**Anyway, here's the next chapter - once again, this fic is a little different to any I've done before (no Master, dun dun dun), so fingers crossed and hope you all enjoy...  
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><p><strong>CHAPTER TWO<strong>

"So, where to, for your one trip?" the Doctor inquired, bounding enthusiastically around the TARDIS console. "A cruise on the canals of Hasaris? Nah...probably too dangerous, what with the population explosion of Hasarian Renderers lately. How about Acerlago Prime? The Intergalactic Staring Competition should be good this year! I nearly won that once, you know – I would have too, if the Rallion Gestalt hadn't cheated. No? Not doing it for you? OK then, I know...a quiet fishing trip on Davy Crockett. You can catch the most amazing Gumblejack there, absolutely huge!"

Tejana laughed, enjoying her father's characteristic rambling. Up until now, she hadn't realised how much she had missed it. "There's a _planet_ called Davy Crockett?"

"'Course there is!" he replied, as if it was something she should have known. "In the New Earth System! Four planets - New Earth, Queen Victoria, New Yugoslavia and Davy Crockett."

"Well, I'm not wasting my one trip fishing for Gumblejack," she told him. "I don't even like Gumblejack."

"How can you not like Gumblejack?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Gumblejack are brilliant!"

"How can you not like pears?" Tejana countered with an impish grin, knowing how much her father loathed that particular fruit. "_Pears _are brilliant!"

The Doctor returned her grin with one of his own. "Fair point. You know, it's really good to have you back, Tejana. I've missed you!"

"It's good to _be _back!" she replied honestly, slightly surprised at his words. Sentimentality of any kind was rare from the Doctor.

"I know! We'll go to the Carnivals of Aractacus!" he burst out excitedly, circling the console to the navigational terminal. "We went there once before, remember, when it was just the two of us? You loved it!"

"Yeah, probably because I was just a kid! I was only three hundred years old back then!" she snorted.

"You're never too old for the Carnivals of Aractacus," the Doctor insisted.

She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes heavenwards. "Admit it, you only want to go there because you're still addicted to Zzorgian hotdogs."

"Ooooh, I love Zzorgian hotdogs! Delicious!" he said raptly, smacking his lips loudly.

"You do know what they're made of, don't you? They take the intestines of a horned Candellax and let them ferment for three days..."

The Doctor put his hands over his ears and started to hum loudly and tunelessly. "Not listening!" he sang.

Tejana merely raised her voice and kept talking. "...until they go black, and then they mince them up with onions and the juice from a Metatraxi grub and then..."

He pulled his hands away from his ears and glared at her, a bit huffily. "You've got no sense of adventure, you know that?" he interrupted, obviously not wanting to hear the rest. "All right then, if you don't want to go to the Carnivals, how about you suggest something?"

"Fine!" she answered, her eyes gleaming with wicked challenge. "Let's use the Randomiser."

His head shot up. "The Randomiser? I haven't used that in ages. It's too dangerous. We could end up anywhere – at any time or any place in the Universe."

"Yeah, that's kind of the point of the whole 'random' thing. _Now_ who's got no sense of adventure?" Tejana teased. "My father, the chicken!"

He stiffened and gave her a narrow-eyed look. "Ha! Nobody...and I mean _nobody_... calls the Doctor a chicken! You'd better hold on to something!" With that, he reached for a small red lever on the main console and slammed it down. "Allons-y!"

Without warning, the entire TARDIS shuddered and shook, the floor heaving as though the time machine was tumbling end over end through the Time Vortex. The coral support pillars seemed to glow blood-red, pulsing like giant arteries. The Doctor and Tejana clung desperately to the central console, trying to avoid being tossed around like rag dolls. At last, there was an enormous bump and everything stopped moving as suddenly as it had started. Warily, the Doctor peered over the console at his shaken daughter, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Well, that's never happened before," he remarked.

"That's good to know," she replied fervently.

He straightened and pulled his black-rimmed spectacles out of his pocket, putting them on the end of his nose as he studied the navigational terminal. "At least we've landed safely, that's always a definite positive."

"Landed where?"

"Nowhere."

She raised her eyebrows sceptically. "There's a planet called Nowhere? And I thought Davy Crockett was a dumb name."

"No, I mean, we've literally landed nowhere," he said. "According to the TARDIS database, this galaxy doesn't exist." He flicked a few more switches, frowning in concentration as he stared at the screen. "What? Noooo...no, it can't be!"

Tejana moved around to look over his shoulder, a little concerned at the escalating astonishment in his voice. Perhaps the Randomiser had not been such a good idea after all, given her father's unerring talent for attracting trouble. Perhaps she should have gone with the whole Gumblejack fishing expedition idea. Although, knowing the Doctor, even fishing wasn't guaranteed to be a peaceful occupation.

"What can't it be?"

"According to the TARDIS, this entire galaxy has slipped sideways in time, just by a few seconds. It's temporally out of synch with the rest of the Universe."

Tejana stared at him in shock. "You're kidding. But the only thing that could have caused a chronological fluctuation on that scale is..."

"A Dalek temporal fusion bomb," he finished grimly. "An entire galaxy, totally removed from the mainstream of Time at some stage during the Time War. It's probably been missing for well over a century and nobody's even noticed."

"Oh, that's just creepy," Tejana shivered. "Do you suppose there were any survivors?"

"The TARDIS scanners are all over the place from the temporal fluctuations. Which means there's only one way to find out!" He reached out and activated the door control. "Come on then!"

With that, he put his spectacles back in his pocket, grabbed his coat and strode towards the exit, his face alight with enthusiastic anticipation. Tejana sighed and reluctantly followed after him.

_I definitely should have gone with the Gumblejack, _she thought to herself wryly.

Outside, they found themselves in a leafy forest. The sun slanted cheerfully through the over-arching tree branches, dappling the ground with beautiful, shifting patterns of light and shadow. Birds sang overhead, filling the air with a beautiful torrent of liquid melody.

Tejana looked around suspiciously. "Not exactly what I expected," she commented. For all the apparent serenity of the place, it still somehow raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

For once, the Doctor seemed to share her uneasiness. "Let's stay close together. And keep your eyes open," he instructed, starting to walk between the trees.

"How do you know you're even going in the right direction?" she asked, following behind him.

He waved his hand airily. "A scientific application of the rules of probability."

"In other words, you have no idea and you're guessing."

He grinned. "No, based on the fact that, if you look carefully enough, you'll see that what we're walking on used to be a road," he returned smugly.

Tejana looked down at her feet. Sure enough, in amongst the rampant undergrowth and lacy bracken, she could see an abundance of small, rounded stones, many of them half-buried in the earth and the thick carpet of fallen leaves.

"Cobblestones!" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Ye-p! This wasn't always a forest. I'd say it was all arable land at some point. Over the years, Nature has stepped back in and reclaimed it," he told her. "And the rules of probability dictate that this road must lead somewhere."

Tejana glanced around as they continued to walk. The forest was hauntingly beautiful, but it gave her the shivers. From the moment she had left the TARDIS, she had felt as though she was walking across someone's grave. Realising that this had possibly once been a bustling thoroughfare certainly didn't help to make the place any the less unnerving.

After about half an hour, the trees began to thin and they reached the edge of a large clearing. They found themselves overlooking what had once been a substantial settlement. Tumble-down, dilapidated buildings huddled together, ruined and desolate. Doors drooped sadly from torn hinges, tiled rooves sagging and collapsing from untold years of neglect. Windows were smashed or filmed with grime, fences warped and broken, the destruction and devastation of time evident everywhere they looked. An eerie wind blew down the empty streets, moaning in an unearthly, spine-chilling lament.

"Don't you get tired of always being right?" Tejana asked in a hushed voice.

The Doctor gave her a rueful smile. "Quite often, as it happens."

"I guess this answers our question about survivors. This place is a ghost town."

"We'd better check it out, while we're here," the Doctor said. "Make absolutely sure."

Together, they trudged down the deserted street. Tejana's skin began to prickle. The place seemed to be layered with sadness, a tragic, destitute memorial to what had once been a community of living, breathing people. Shadows of grief seemed to steal from the vacant doorways, creeping into her soul and making her feet heavier and heavier as they walked along.

"Odd. There's no plant life among the ruins," the Doctor observed. "No weeds, no creepers, no brambles. After all this time, this place should be totally overgrown."

"It's the Time-fire," Tejana whispered, her voice choked with distress at the horrific psychic impressions she was receiving. "Can't you feel it? These people were just living their lives, minding their own business, when the Daleks detonated that fusion bomb. The Time-fire swept through here and wiped them all out of Time in a blink of an eye, as if they had never been. It's scorched this part of the planet permanently. Nothing will ever grow here again."

Her father reached out and put a comforting arm around her. "They probably never even knew what hit them, Tejana."

"That doesn't make it any better," she answered bitterly. "Just more insignificant, innocent, unknown casualties of the bloody Time War. The bloody, _bloody_ Time War!"

The Doctor looked around at the crumbling structures, his eyes like dark, compressed stone as he absorbed the sorrow of the place. "Listen, I'm going to take a look inside a couple of the houses," he said. "Why don't you stay out here?"

She nodded wordlessly and then watched as he walked towards one of the buildings, his long brown coat swinging around his ankles. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to listen to the melancholy whispering of the wind, trying not to remember the terrible darkness of the Time War. Just then, something lying nearby on the side of the road caught her attention. She bent down and picked it up. It was a child's doll, with long blonde hair, beautifully dressed in a ruffled white night-gown. Two blank, soulless eyes stared up at her unblinkingly, a perfectly symmetrical tear-drop carefully etched on to each cold, white porcelain cheek. Tejana's hand tightened convulsively on the toy. Somehow it seemed achingly symbolic of the tragedy that had happened here and on so many other unsuspecting, undeserving planets across the Universe.

Suddenly, she heard a furtive rustling noise behind her. Whirling around, her eyes raked the street. Nothing had changed. The dark, empty doorways still yawned back at her, with no sign of life. Then the noise came again, from a different direction. She spun around again. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a brief glint of silver trickling across the ground towards one of the houses, but when she stared directly at the spot, there was nothing there.

_Rats_, she told herself, with a grimace of disgust. _That's all it is. Rats and abandoned buildings always go together._

At that moment, a heavy hand fell unexpectedly on her shoulder and both her hearts nearly stopped at once. Looking up, she saw to her immense relief that it was only her father.

"Stars, don't _do_ that!" she exploded. "You scared me half to death!"

"Sorry," he replied contritely. "Anyway, nothing of interest in there."

She drew in a shaky breath. "Can we go now? This place is like standing in a tomb."

"Yeah, we can go. Let's get back to the TARDIS. I'll reverse the co-ordinates and we'll get back to the temporal mainstream," the Doctor agreed, leading the way back towards the path through the forest. "So...let's see, where were we? Heading for the Carnivals of Aractacus, right?"

Tejana couldn't help smiling. "Sounds great," she responded, as the trees closed in around them again, the soft leafy mulch squelching underfoot.

And in that instant, without warning, a blaze of silver streaked through the undergrowth towards them at incredible speed and leapt viciously at her throat.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Author's Note: Hello everyone. Big thanks to the following people for reviewing - Romana-II, irishartemis, MayFairy, SlytherinPrincess123, padmay97, mericat, Imorgen, xxTeam-Masterxx, Aietradaea, Astra68 and Bad Dog No Biscuit._**

**_So glad to see not everyone has forgotten Ten!_**

**_To Imorgen: Thank you so much! I'm delighted to hear you have been following and enjoying the series. I hope you will continue to review and let me know what you think! XXX  
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**_(NB To all those following "The Master's Rose", Chapter Nine is now up, if you haven't already read it!)  
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**_ And here's another chapter of this one...  
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><p><strong>CHAPTER THREE<strong>

At the sound of Tejana's scream, the Doctor whirled around. Horrified, he saw her trying to fend off a long, silver, segmented creature like a snake with a flat head. The thing was flailing and writhing in her grasp, single-mindedly trying to reach her throat. Even though he had not seen one for a long, long time, the Doctor had no trouble whatsoever in recognising the creature as a Cybermat, one of the small cyborgs used as advance guards and plague carriers by the Mondasian Cybermen. During the Time War, the Cybermen had used nests of Cybermats to infiltrate and wipe out the humanoid populations of entire planets with their lethal venom. Like their Cyber-masters, they were pitiless and relentless killers.

Acting purely on instinct, he sprinted back towards his daughter, pulling out his sonic screwdriver as he ran and turning it up to the highest setting. Grasping the Cybermat behind its eyeless head, he managed to tear it away from her and hurl it to the ground, before aiming the screwdriver at the creature and activating it. The Cybermat was just about to leap at them again when the acute hypersonic sound wave hit it, effectively disabling its motor functions. Twitching and hissing violently, convulsing in its death throes, it rolled into a ball like a wood louse and lay still.

"There are more of them," Tejana gasped, pulling her own sonic screwdriver from her pocket. "They followed us from the village. There must have been a nest of them there."

Sure enough, more rustling noises came from the forest all around them. Quickly, father and daughter took up a defensive position, standing back to back, their screwdrivers held before them. Then the attack began in earnest. Gleaming like incandescent malice, driven by an inexorable urge to kill, the Cybermats swarmed through the undergrowth in immense numbers, metallic silver streaks slithering towards them wherever they looked. Each one had to be individually struck with the sound wave in the exact spot where the head joined the creature's body, requiring intense concentration from the two Time Lords. One slip and they knew they were both dead. Soon the overgrown path was littered with segmented metal spheres, like oversized, discarded ball-bearings. The Cybermats seemed completely undeterred by the destruction of their fellows. They just kept on attacking, consumed by their deadly purpose. And, one by one, they were destroyed and fell away.

At last, just as the Doctor thought he would have to falter through sheer exhaustion, the creatures stopped coming. The undergrowth stopped rustling and the forest was still again. It appeared the Time Lords had won, at least for the time being.

"Whew, that was close!" he exclaimed jubilantly. "How good were we though? Hand to eye co-ordination, that's the ticket! I told you all those shoot-'em-up games on the Nintendo Wii would come in handy some time."

Tejana did not answer. Concerned, he turned to look at her. She was bent over, supporting herself with her hands on her knees, her head bowed. "Are you all right?"

There was a short silence. Then she said, "Not exactly, no." Raising her head, she extended her arm towards him. Two dark puncture marks lacerated her wrist, the twin incisions looking somehow obscene and lurid against her smooth skin. "The first one got me."

The Doctor went pale. The virulent poison from the Cybermat fangs had already contaminated the wound. It had turned bruise-black, filaments of venom beginning to emanate from the bite-mark, reaching up her arm. Her complex Gallifreyan immune system was doing its best to halt the advance of the poison, but it was fighting a losing battle. Her cheeks were flushed with fever, her eyes much too bright. Reaching out, he just managed to catch her as she wavered on her feet and almost collapsed.

"Stay still, Tejana," he instructed, lowering her carefully to the ground and supporting her against the trunk of a nearby tree. "The more you move, the quicker the poison spreads."

"What were Cybermats doing here?" she gritted out, the breath constricting harshly in her throat. "The Mondasian Cybermen were all but wiped out in the Time War."

"I don't know. Perhaps some of them got stranded here when this galaxy slipped out of the mainstream of Time," the Doctor replied distractedly, his thoughts racing, sorting rapidly through his limited options. "Listen to me, Tejana. I have some Cybermat antivenin in the TARDIS. If I run, I can get there and back in half an hour. But I'm going to have to leave you here. I can't take you with me – it would only stimulate the venom and you'd never make it that far. You have to sit still, conserve your strength and wait for me."

Tejana stirred restlessly, murmuring something incomprehensible about the Time War. The Doctor gripped her by the shoulders and gave her a tiny shake. "Tejana, can you hear me? Do you understand?"

"TARDIS...antivenin...sit still, don't move," she muttered disjointedly. "Gotcha."

He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be back. Trust me."

"Always," she responded, giving him a weak smile.

Then he was running back towards the TARDIS, as fast as he possibly could, his brown coat flaring out behind him.

* * *

><p>Tejana had no idea how long she had been waiting. It could have been a minute, a day or a year. Time seemed to bend, winding in and out of her increasing delirium, twisting and refracting like an untouchable ray of light.<p>

_The Doctor had said he would be back. He would be back, wouldn't he...he wouldn't leave her here? He always came for her eventually, always, even if she had to wait a long, long time..._

Sweat stood out on her brow. Her body seemed to burn, as arid and parched as a desert, bathing her in heat everywhere except for her injured arm. That was cold, so very cold, like ice. She looked down at it, trying to force her fevered brain to focus. The twin puncture marks on her forearm stood out in sharp relief, obsidian dark against her pale skin. Already a network of dark veins was beginning to trail further up her arm. The venom was spreading in a slow, lethal tide, reaching for her hearts.

She leaned back against the tree, feeling the roughness of the bark behind her head. Her own shallow respiration echoed in her ears, short, sharp inhalations like tiny hiccups. Overhead, through the canopy of leafy branches, she could see glimpses of orange sky. A small contented smile touched her lips, her mind briefly wandering into confusion. Orange? Was she on Gallifrey? Was she...home? At long last? But then the wind stirred the green, green leaves...green, not the beautiful silver of her own world...and the smile dropped away as she remembered that Gallifrey was gone forever. All she was seeing was an ordinary sunset on a planet time had forgotten long ago.

A single tear slid down her face, eerily falling as though in slow motion, landing with a splash on something in her lap. Looking down, she saw she was holding a doll, with long blonde hair, dressed in a ruffled white night gown. It was the doll from the abandoned village. Tejana frowned. She couldn't remember bringing it with her. Her tear had fallen on to its frozen porcelain face, pooling in its wide open blue eyes and running down its white cheek. A shudder ran through Tejana's body. The thing looked just like a weeping child. She tried to drop it, tried to force it from her lap, but her hands wouldn't seem to co-operate. The doll just lay there, staring up at her as if in reproach, its face wet with sorrow.

And then she heard it...the sound of the children crying, not just one, not just a hundred, but thousands, sobbing in fear and bewilderment, far, far away, beyond her reach, beyond her help. The forest seemed to wheel and yaw around her, spinning in slow motion like a nightmare.

"Who are you?" she screamed, her eyes raking the gloom surrounding her. "_Where_ are you?"

As if in response, the sound of the crying grew louder and even more poignant. In the distance, through a veil of swirling mist, she saw a tall figure standing between the trees and watching her. For one wild, relieved moment, her vision blurred and she thought it was her father, returning with the antivenin. But then she realised that the man was wearing a long blue, air-force issue great coat.

"_Jack_?" she whispered incredulously.

He didn't answer. Instead he just stood there and looked at her, an expression of devastation on his face. Tears glittered on his cheeks, his eyes shattered and desolate in a way she had never seen before. Tejana's hearts nearly broke as she realised what it must mean. Something was happening back on Earth. Something had gone wrong, while she was away. Somehow, even in his overwhelming grief, Jack's gaze was accusing, blaming her for not being there...

"Jack!" She struggled to her feet and began to stagger towards him, straying further and further into the depths of the forest, away from the path. Brambles and creepers tore at her, holding her back, ripping blood from her skin as she desperately fought to reach him. But no matter how she tried, she couldn't seem to get close. His image wavered like a mirage across her tortured vision, always just a little bit further away, watching her with that terrible look of betrayal and condemnation on his grief-stricken face. "Jack! Tell me what happened! _Jack_!"

Then the children stopped crying and began to scream, one long, piercing note, resonating at some kind of weird frequency that went on and on and on, drilling mercilessly into her head. She clapped her hands over her ears, frantic to shut the ululating noise out of her head, yet knowing that it could not be shut out, because it was already inside.

"Jack! _PLEASE!_"

But the vision of Jack shimmered and disappeared, leaving her alone in a forest which was suddenly threatening, black with pain, the looming trees pressing in around her as the terrifying sound of the children screaming seared through her veins, inextricably entwined with the cybermat venom spiralling rapidly up her arm.

"Jack, I'm sorry! _I'm so sorry!_"

She took three more stumbling, uncertain steps through the howling darkness and then helplessly fell.

And the earth opened up and swallowed her whole.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Another Author's Note: OK, so I wrote that last bit listening to "The Ballad of Ianto Jones", from the "Torchwood: Children of Earth" soundtrack. SO DAMN SAD! Going into my concrete bunker for a little cry now. (Slams door!)<em>**


	4. Chapter 4

**_Author's Note: Hello again. Another quick update, aren't I a good girl?_**

**_Huge thanks to the following people for supporting this story in the form of much-welcome reviews: padmay97, klinicallyinsanekoschei, MayFairy, Aietradaea, tree1138, Romana-II, iDestiny, Astra68 and Imorgen.  
><em>**

_**Can't think of much else to say this time, so yadda, yadda, yadda...here it is!  
><strong>_

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER FOUR<strong>

The Doctor ran like the wind, his red Converse sneakers barely touching the ground, his double heartbeat pounding in his ears. If there was one thing he knew how to do well, it was run - he had been doing it for as long as he could remember. And this time it was more important than ever, because he was not running for his own life, but for his daughter's. He could see in his mind's eye the black filaments of Cybermat venom crawling up her arm and knew that every extra second he could gain was crucial.

At last, the familiar welcoming blue of the TARDIS came into sight. Pulling the key from his pocket, he thrust it into the lock of the time machine and flung the doors wide, bursting into the console room. Tearing off his coat, he tossed it across the nearest coral support column and threw himself to his knees on the mesh flooring, pulling up great sections of it to reach the storage area below.

"Now where did I file it?" he muttered to himself. "So long since I've needed it, could be anywhere. 'C'...'C' for Cybermat, got to be..."

As he spoke, he heaved out a chest and opened it, frantically pulling out items at random and discarding them over his shoulder.

"Carrionite crystal ball, spare piece of celery, Agatha Christie novel, Cup of Truth, cricket shoes, Cottingley fairy photos, cat badge...blimey, no Cybermat antivenin...maybe 'A'? 'A' for antivenin, that makes sense, just what I'd do..."

He pulled out another chest and began going through the contents. "Anti-gravity device, acupuncture needles, Andorran grommets, acidophilus milk, audiometer, Atlas of Athena...come on, come on, come _on, _where are you?"

Frustrated, he sat back on his heels, running his hands through his hair. "I've _got _to get a better filing system. Think, Doctor, _think_!" Then his eyes brightened. "Of course! 'M' for Medical! Where else?"

Leaping across to the other side of the console, he tugged aside another section of flooring and retrieved a large plastic crate. "Mu-field generator, Mirror of the Gorgon, mothballs, toy mouse...ah ha! Medical kit! And _there_ you are, right where I left you! Cybermat antivenin!"

With deep relief, he drew out a small case containing a hypospray device and three glass ampoules of a deep amber liquid. The antivenin sparkled and shimmered in the light, attesting to the large proportion of gold dust contained in the serum, essential for neutralising the Cybermat poison.

The Doctor was so engrossed in checking over the antidote, he did not think to look up at the exterior scanner screen where, behind his back, the fading afternoon sunlight struck silvery gleams from still more ominous metallic forms.

* * *

><p>Tejana was actually falling. Somehow, the knowledge managed to pierce her fog-shrouded brain. This was no venom-induced hallucination, she had really tumbled right through the earth into a warm, womb-like darkness. Now she was falling...no, not falling, precisely, more like <em>sliding<em>...deeper and deeper into the bowels of the planet, gathering speed as she went. She could not have stopped, even if she had wanted to. But the idea of stopping never really even crossed her mind. The screaming of the children in her head had disappeared, leaving behind a peculiar, fatalistic lethargy. She could no longer feel her injured arm – it was numb all the way up to the shoulder. All she wanted to do now was to sleep. A small voice in the back of her head warned her that she had to stay awake and alert, but she couldn't remember why.

"Jack?" she whispered. Jack had been here, hadn't he? She was sure she remembered seeing him. After all, Jack was always there when she needed him, as constant as the sunrise. But why didn't he answer? "_Jack?_"

But there was only silence and she just kept on sliding through the darkness. Oddly, the sensation of skidding along at speed was familiar and almost soothing, like being on a helter skelter ride at a funfair. Her brow creased in a bewildered frown, her fevered brain trying to make sense of what was happening.

"I told the Doctor I didn't _want_ to go to the Carnivals of Aractacus," she said to herself, rather crossly. "He just never listens!"

* * *

><p>Confident he had everything he needed, the Doctor snapped the small case shut, dragged on his brown coat and shoved the life-saving antivenin into his pocket. For a moment, he contemplated taking the TARDIS back to the place he had left Tejana, but in the end he decided it was safer to run. Sometimes the TARDIS could be a little...unpredictable?...unreliable?...particularly over short distances. And in this situation, there was no room for even a little leeway. He had to get back to Tejana right now.<p>

The console room looked like a bomb had hit it, with miscellaneous items scattered all over the floor. Carefully avoiding the yawning gaps left by the mesh flooring he had pulled up, the Doctor raced for the doors and erupted back out into the forest path, only to skid abruptly to a stop in horror. Seven silver cyborgs, unmistakably Mondasian Cybermen, emerged ponderously from the trees and completely surrounded him, cutting off his retreat to the TARDIS. They were tall and menacing and each of them held a deadly-looking energy weapon.

"You are a Time Lord," the Cyber-Leader said implacably, inclining his black-helmeted head towards the Doctor. "The Time Lords are the enemies of the Cybermen. You will be deleted."

"DELETE. DELETE!" chanted the other Cybermen, raising their weapons with perfect synchronicity and deadly accuracy.

"Uh-oh!" the Doctor breathed. "Busted."

* * *

><p>Tejana's strange journey through the earth finished in a sudden, unexpected rush. One minute she was sliding endlessly through the darkness, the next minute she had exploded feet first into the light, landing on her back with a painful jolt. For a moment, she just lay there, trying to catch her breath.<p>

_Now that WAS weird, _she thought dimly. _Even for the Carnivals of Aractacus and that's saying something!_

Fortunately, she seemed to have landed on something soft. Flexing the fingers of her good hand, she explored the surface of the ground beneath her. If she hadn't known any better, she would have said it was _carpet_. Perspiration trickled from her brow and stung her eyes. Rubbing her hand irritably across her face, she managed to sit up. To her absolute astonishment, she appeared to be sitting on the floor of an Earth-style parlour from the Victorian era. The softness beneath her was indeed carpet, of the ugly floral-patterned kind. She was surrounded by a crowded profusion of uncomfortable-looking furniture – sofas, ottomans, stools, upright chairs and easy chairs, all of them upholstered in a variety of stiff, scratchy fabric and carefully spread with intricate hand-made lace doilies. A plush-covered round table held pride of place in the middle of the room, displaying a multitude of tiny, framed photographs of what appeared to be children. A small, brightly-blazing fire crackled in the hearth, over-arched by an ornately carved wooden mantelpiece, on which a profusion of hideously-coloured wax flowers reposed under several glass domes.

Tejana blinked in confusion, staring around the room. It looked normal enough, rather long with a high, airy ceiling, the walls covered in garishly striped wallpaper and decorated with still more sepia tinted photographs, as well as innumerable portraits and prints. Eerily, there was not one single window and, apart from a wooden door at the far end of the room, there was no evidence of any other entrance point. Any clue as to the means of Tejana's unorthodox arrival appeared to have inexplicably vanished.

"Alice," she murmured hazily. "That's who I am today. Alice in Wonderland. Any moment now, a White Rabbit will pop out and tell me it's late for a very important date."

Just then, a soft, timid voice said, "Hello."

Tejana nearly jumped out of her skin. Turning her head, she saw a small, humanoid figure curled in a wing-back chair by the fire.

"You're not a rabbit," Tejana said.

"'Course not," the other replied, hopping diffidently down from the chair. At that moment, Tejana got her first good look at her new companion - flowing blonde hair; a pale, delicate face; big blue eyes; dressed in a long, ruffled white nightgown.

The Time Lady's fever-addled brain seemed to freeze in terror. This had to be a nightmare, some sort of hallucination, it just had to be. "Oh gods, you're the doll, that awful, creepy doll. First you were crying and then you were screaming and now you're talking to me." Instinctively, she began to scrabble backwards in retreat, a stifled scream choking her throat. "Just keep away from me...stay back!"

The apparition's perfect face creased in a small frown. "Why are you so scared? I'm not a rabbit _or _a doll. I'm a child. My name is Alison."

"Alison," Tejana said to herself grimly. "OK, the doll just told me her name is Alison. I've got to get a grip. Come on, Tejana, you're the last daughter of Gallifrey...get a grip, get a grip, get a grip!"

"Really, I'm a child, not a doll," the little girl insisted. "Here, feel."

Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, she extended her hand cautiously towards Tejana's cheek. Tejana flinched away, but as the fingertips brushed her skin, she realised they felt warm and gentle and very much alive.

"There, see?" Alison smiled. "I told you. I'm a child. But what are you?"

Tejana gazed at her, only partially reassured. "I'm a Time Lady. My name is Tejana."

"A lady?" Alison put her head on one side curiously. "That can't be right. To be a lady, you have to be an adult."

"I am an adult," Tejana answered hoarsely. Her voice was failing her now. The icy coldness from her arm had spread into her torso and up into her throat, paralysing her vocal chords. The unique properties of the poison in her system were preventing regeneration. In some far, distant part of her mind, she recognised that she didn't have long to live. This time, the Doctor would come too late.

"That can't be right," Alison said. "There are no adults, not any more. The children are the only ones left. Nurse says so."

Tejana couldn't answer. Instead, she lay back on the soft carpet, her strength draining away. If these were her last moments, she had to say, she was pretty disappointed. There were plenty of other things she would have preferred to hallucinate about as she crossed over, that was for sure.

"What's the matter?" Alison persisted, patting her on the shoulder.

"Sick..." Tejana gasped out. "So sick..."

"Oh dear. Nurse doesn't allow anyone to be sick. That's against the rules!" the child exclaimed. "I'll have to go and get her."

With that, she turned and disappeared.

"Wait..." Tejana called, her voice almost inaudible now. But no-one answered.

It didn't worry her too much. It was more peaceful to be alone. She wished she had the energy to think back over her life, to say goodbye to everything she had known, to all that she had been. But she seemed to be floating in a misty haze now, the flame of her life wavering like a candle in the wind. Vaguely, she became aware of a woman bending over her. She was in her late middle age, with a stern face and greying hair drawn severely back beneath a white lace cap. She was dressed in a long, black gown, covered by a practical white apron.

"Goodness me," the woman clucked to herself. "You'd think they could give me some notice before sending me another one. And, what's more, by the look of it, this one's defective! Whatever next?"

With that, she lifted the delirious Tejana into her arms, as easily as if she had weighed no more than a feather and began to carry her away.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Author's Note: Whew, it's a long time since I updated this one. Hopefully there are still some people out there who have not died of old age while waiting and will still continue to read it! Thanks to findingyouagain, Romana2, Aietradaea, alaine.105, MayFairy, mericat, astra68 and noideagirl for your reviews from long, long ago :)  
><strong>_

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER FIVE<strong>

"All right!" the Doctor yelled, thinking fast as he backed away, trying to stay as close to the TARDIS as he could. "All right, you got me, I'm a Time Lord! But did it ever occur to you that I might be exactly what you need? You Cybermen are stranded here, you've been stuck in this galaxy since the Time War ended. And my TARDIS is the only way back to the temporal mainstream!"

Jerkily, the Cyber Leader raised his arm in a quelling gesture and the others lowered their weapons. "You lie, Time Lord," he said flatly. "All Time Lords lie, it is the way of your race. The Time War has not ended. We have received no intelligence of this. And we are not stranded. We are an advance guard for the Cyber Legions. This galaxy is of key strategic importance in the War. We await further orders from Cyber Command before the invasion commences."

"And how long have you been waiting?" the Doctor demanded. "How long since you heard anything from Cyber Command? Decades? Over a _century_? _Think_ about it, you know I'm telling the truth. The Cybermen weren't the only ones to consider this sector strategically important. The Daleks must have thought so too, because they detonated a temporal fusion bomb. This galaxy, and everything in it, including you, slipped sideways out of Time."

The Cyber Leader hesitated, his logic circuits clearly processing what the Doctor had said and correlating it with his own data. "If the War has ended, who won the victory?" he asked. "Were the Cyber race triumphant?"

"Nobody won," the Doctor said wearily. "Everybody lost. The Dalek Empire, the Cyber Legions, Gallifrey and all the other Time Lords...they're all gone now, utterly destroyed."

Again, the Cyber Leader hesitated. He almost seemed appalled by the enormity of this information, even though the Doctor knew that was impossible. Cybermen did not have enough emotion to ever be appalled, despite being told the devastating news that they were the last survivors of their race.

"This cannot be. The Cyber Legions are invincible!" the Cyber Leader barked eventually. "You will return us to the temporal mainstream in your ship. Then we will determine the truth of this matter and you shall die for your lies!"

"Always happy to help!" the Doctor replied, turning back to the TARDIS with studied nonchalance. The Cyberman standing between him and the doors of the time machine eyed him balefully as he made a great show of patting himself down and shoving his hands in and out of his many pockets.

"Do not forget, Time Lord, our weapons will be trained on you at all times," the Cyber Leader warned, taking a ponderous step forwards. "You would be well advised not to try anything foolish."

"Oh, don't worry, I won't forget. I'm just looking for the key," the Doctor lied jauntily, surreptitiously palming an ampoule of anti-venin from the small medical kit in his pocket, while he continued to ramble on and on. "Can't get in without the key, you know. Mind you, I _can_ be quite forgetful at times. Totally forgot where I parked the TARDIS once. London, Earth, August Bank Holiday, 1962, it was. Now _that_ was a nightmare! I had to check out nearly every single police box in London before I found it, took me days. And you wouldn't believe some of the things that go on inside those Earth police boxes, it'd curl your hair...if you had any, of course. But guns are a different kettle of fish, aren't they? Nah, I don't think even I could forget seven Cybermen pointing guns at my head."

"Enough of your inane talk," the Cyber Leader ordered. "You will grant us access to your ship immediately."

"All right, all right," the Doctor sniffed. "Blimey, for a race that supposedly operates without emotion, you're a pretty impatient lot. Now, if you wouldn't mind moving...?"

At a nod from the Cyber Leader, the Cyberman in front of the TARDIS stepped aside, allowing the Doctor to unlock the doors. At a push from his hand, the right hand door swung inwards, forming a narrow gap through which it was only possible to pass in single file. Then he walked though it, closely followed by the vigilant Cyberman.

The silver cyborg had no sooner crossed the threshold, when the Doctor whirled around with unexpected speed and smashed the glass ampoule into his chest. The gold-flecked amber fluid smeared messily across the ventilation grid set into the front of the cyborg's metallic body. Immediately, he started to groan harshly, staggering backwards in agonised surprise and clutching at his chest, as the lethal gold dust contained in the anti-venin began to choke his respiratory system, efficiently asphyxiating him.

Taking advantage of his enemy's weakness, the Doctor gave the dying Cyberman a sharp push, sending him reeling back out the TARDIS door into the startled arms of his companions. Then he slammed and dead-locked the door, preventing any further access to the time machine.

"Molto bene! Game, set and match!" he said grimly, before leaping over the debris still scattered on the floor and hurrying over to the central control panel. On the exterior scanner, he could see the Cybermen blasting away at the doors with their laser weapons. He wasn't worried – the TARDIS had once withstood an attack by the hordes of Genghis Khan. A few Mondasian Cybermen weren't going to worry her.

"Well, looks like it's up to you, old girl," he muttered, stroking the console. "If we're going to have any chance of reaching Tejana in time, you have to get this right. You've always got me where I need to be, even if it's not necessarily where I want to be. So don't let me down now!"

With that, he readjusted the navigational coordinates and slammed down the de-materialisation lever.

* * *

><p>As soon as he stepped out of the TARDIS doors, both his hearts sank. This wasn't the right place. Just as he had feared, the TARDIS navigational system had not been able to correctly calibrate the short spatial hop. He was standing in a small clearing he had never seen before, deep within the darkening forest. There was no sign of the overgrown cobbled path he and Tejana had followed from the settlement, or of the remnants of their battle against the attacking Cybermats. Even more importantly, there was absolutely no sign of his injured daughter.<p>

"Oh, Tejana...I'm sorry...I'm so, so sorry!" he whispered brokenly, running both hands through his spiky brown hair, anguish tearing at him as he realised he had now irretrievably run out of time.

_He had asked her to trust him and then he had failed her, yet again, just as he had so many times before..._

More out of habit than out of hope, he pulled his sonic screwdriver jerkily from his pocket and scanned the immediate area. To his shock, he saw that the scanner was picking up traces of a Gallifreyan life form. According to these readings, Tejana had been here...and very recently, too. Using the glowing blue diode as a light source, he ran around the clearing, following the beeping sound of the screwdriver. Now that he looked more closely, he saw that some of the bracken had been trampled, as if someone had stumbled heedlessly through here, clumsy and careless of where they had placed their feet. A rising excitement began to fill him. Someone in the grip of a venom-induced delirium, perhaps? But what had she been doing here, so far from where he had left her? Why, oh why, could his companions never stay put when he told them to? Even his own daughter, for Gallifrey's sake!

He thought of his last words to the TARDIS: _You've always got me where I need to be, even if it's not necessarily where I want to be..._

"Oh, well done, old girl! " he whooped in relief, realising that, once again, his most constant companion had known better than he did. "You didn't get it wrong, after all! This is exactly where I need to be! She's here somewhere, isn't she? But where?"

The scanner trail terminated abruptly at the foot of an enormous tree, where the beeping sound intensified until it was almost deafening. The Doctor couldn't pick it up again anywhere else. He looked up into the branches of the tree, but the trunk was much too tall and smooth for Tejana to have climbed, especially in her fevered condition. Using the psychic link, he tried to narrow down her location, but all he received from her was a tangled jumble of thought-waves that made no sense at all. It was enough to confirm that she was still alive, at least, but it wasn't getting him any closer to finding her. Falling back on the more traditional approach, he shouted her name over and over again, in every direction, without any answer.

Frantic now, he kicked roughly at the undergrowth beneath the tree, where the beeping was strongest. All at once, as if responding to his touch, the trailing fronds of greenery retreated and curled back, revealing a deep, dark hole. The Doctor stared down at it in surprise. In the twilit clearing, it was impossible to see how far into the earth it went. Rather gingerly, he stuck his hand inside and felt around. The sides of the hole felt cold under his fingers, as though it was lined with smooth, shiny metal. Even with his arm fully extended, he couldn't feel the bottom. Pulling his hand back, he scrabbled around in his pockets until he found a cricket ball, which he dropped into the hole, listening carefully to the swishing sound it made as it rolled and rolled and rolled, deeper and deeper into the ground.

"It's a chute!" he said in astonishment. "A metal chute, going down into the earth, in the middle of a forest, on a planet that's slipped sideways out of Time!" Despite the urgency of his predicament, he found his mouth twisting in a grin that was half exasperation and half reluctant admiration. "Oh, of course it is! And, needless to say, if there is a metal chute to be found, going down into the earth, in the middle of a forest, on a planet that's slipped sideways out of Time, leave it to my daughter to fall down it!"

Carefully, he replaced his screwdriver in his pocket and crouched on the ground in front of the hole. "Well, Doctor, only one thing to say in this sort of situation!" he told himself in a resigned tone.

Then he swung his long legs into the chute and pushed off, like a child on a slippery slide.

And, echoing back up the chute, all that could be heard in the quiet forest clearing was a long, drawn out, " ALLON-SYYYYYYYY!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: Ah ha, so there are some people still alive and reading! I'm so happy to hear it! Thanks very much to MayFairy, Catelly, Aietradaea, mericat and noideagirl for reviewing the last chapter.  
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><p><strong>CHAPTER SIX<strong>

The absolute last place the Doctor expected to land was flat on his back in the middle of a Victorian sitting room. On the command deck of a Cyber-ship, maybe, or deep within a secret, subterranean war-base. Or even inside some sort of long-forgotten bomb shelter left over from the Time War. But not in this cramped, over-furnished room with its ornate fireplace and its fussy decorations. He sat up, gingerly rubbing his backside, where he was sure he could feel a big bruise forming already. Except for him, the room was empty. Bewildered, he eyed the lacy doilies scattered everywhere and the awful striped wallpaper.

_Just when you think you've seen everything_, he thought to himself. _What the hell happened? Did I come through some sort of portal?_

However, pulling out the sonic screwdriver and taking some readings, he soon ascertained that he had not moved in time or space. Wherever he was, it was exactly where he should be, deep under the ground beneath the forest he had just left. Moreover, the Gallifreyan lifeform traces were particularly strong. Unless he missed his guess, Tejana had also ended up here, right in this spot, where she had lain for some time. The question was, what had happened to her after that? With the amount of Cybermat venom that had been in her system, she should have been far too weak to walk any further. Where had she gone?

Looking around the room, he saw it only had one door.

"Guess that answers that question," he said out loud, in a determinedly cheerful voice, the one he always used to convince his companions that everything was going to be all right, even though it probably wasn't.

Of course, no-one answered him, since he was the only one there. He sighed, hating the silence. That was one of the reasons he had found it so difficult to adjust to travelling on his own. After all, what was the point of being so brilliant, if there was no-one around to notice?

Climbing to his feet, he dusted himself off. "Oh, Doctor, you're so wonderful," he said in a feminine falsetto, which sounded remarkably like his daughter. Then he answered himself in his normal voice, "Yes. Yes, I know."

He grimaced and started walking towards the door. Somehow telling himself he was wonderful didn't quite have quite the same ring as hearing it from a companion. Besides, if Tejana had really been there with him, she would've been more likely to give him one of her looks, the ones she reserved for when she thought he was being especially idiotic. Donna would have just come out and said it: "Oi, spaceman, stop being an idiot!" But Tejana was far too dignified and self-contained for that, especially in her current regeneration. Once, when she was a lot younger, she had thought everything he did was wonderful, he remembered wistfully. Back then, he had not just been her father, he had been her hero, the centre of her Universe. However, that had been a long, long time ago, before the advent of the Time War.

_I should have left her alone, _he thought dully, thinking of how he had teased her about the mouldy cheese in her fridge. _For the first time in ages, she was actually settled. She had a home and a job at Torchwood. She had Jack. Perhaps the two of them could have made a real go of it together, if only I'd stayed out of her life. Maybe they could have even had kids. She'd make a great mother, if she only had the chance. But I had to be selfish and take her away from all that, didn't I? And now she's in deadly danger and it's my fault. The Time Lord Victorious, what a joke! I'm more like a disease. Everything I touch, I destroy, even my own family..._

Swallowing back the angry pain that gathered in his throat, he pushed the door open. Whatever else happened, he had to make it right. He had to find Tejana and get her safely back to her life on Earth. Then he would go back to travelling on his own, before anyone else got hurt. _Rose. Martha. Jack. Donna. Tejana. _ Without meaning to, he had damaged them all. It had to stop.

On the other side of the door, he found himself in a large front hallway with enormously high ceilings, as if he really was inside a Victorian mansion. The floor was made of highly polished marble in a black and white chequer-board style. In the centre of the room was a sweeping staircase with beautifully carved bannisters, leading into the upper regions of the house. Again, there were no windows. Instead, lit candles shone in wall sconces at regular intervals around the walls. At the foot of the staircase, against the opposite wall, a large grandfather clock ticked placidly away to itself, its golden face gleaming in the candle-light.

The Doctor stopped and listened. Apart from the steady 'tick,tick,tick' of the clock, there was no sound to be heard and no-one to be seen. Raising his screwdriver, he picked up Tejana's trail once more. She had definitely gone up the stairs. He hurried over and put his foot on the bottom step. Suddenly, the hair seemed to stand up on the back of his neck. Turning slowly and carefully, he looked behind him, but there was nothing there except the clock. The golden filigreed hands were showing the time as 11:30. He narrowed his eyes, but could see nothing unusual. With one last suspicious glance over his shoulder, he hurried up the stairs, following the beeping of the screwdriver.

The device led him across the green-carpeted upper landing and past several more wooden doors, until he came to one with a fat, round, brass handle, where the beeping became steadily louder. He switched the screwdriver off and returned it to his pocket, before turning the handle as stealthily as possible. It wasn't locked and it opened smoothly under his hand. Inside, the room was dark, except for one dim lamp, which seemed to be a night-light of some sort. His shadow stretched out blackly on the floor in front of him, his body silhouetted by the golden glow of illumination from the hall. He stepped forward warily, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dim light. All around him, his keen ears picked up the sound of soft, regular breathing. As his vision sharpened, he realised he was standing in some sort of dormitory. Against the right hand wall there were six beds and against the left, there were seven. In each bed, cuddled down under a white, quilted coverlet, a little girl slept.

The Doctor drew in his breath in surprise. Moving as quietly as he could, he tiptoed down the row of beds, carefully studying each occupant in turn. The children looked ordinary enough. They all appeared to be aged between six and twelve years old. Some were blonde, some dark-haired, some had freckles, some were sucking on their thumbs. They were all wearing white cotton nightgowns and the Doctor couldn't help thinking they were the picture of innocence. But that wasn't enough to make him drop his guard. He'd travelled the Universe for long enough to know that, more often than not, things were not what they seemed. For all he knew, these peaceful-looking children could be a race of savage, blood-sucking vampires.

Then he came to the last bed on the left-hand side. The girl in this bed was also dressed in a white nightgown and her curly dark hair was drawn into two long pigtails, one on each side of her head. However, she was much taller than the others and her unconscious face was very familiar. It was Tejana.

With a muffled exclamation, the Doctor fell to his knees on the wooden floor beside her bed. She was breathing regularly, like the others, just as if she was sleeping. Both his hearts tightened, the years falling away as he looked at her. With her delicate features and the childish hairstyle, she looked no more than eight years old. _The same age she had been when he made the greatest mistake of his life and left her behind on Gallifrey. _

He could see where black tendrils of venom were beginning to extrude from the neckline of her nightgown, staining the pale skin of her throat. But even though that was definitely not good, the condition was not as advanced as he would have expected after such a prolonged period of exposure, even for someone possessing a Time Lord physiology. Realistically, she should be dead. Reaching out with a trembling hand, he tried to touch her, only to find that he encountered some sort of invisible barrier, crackling around the outline of her body like static electricity. From the sensation of it on his skin, the Doctor knew it was a personal stasis field. He frowned anxiously. Whoever had put Tejana here had effectively placed her in suspended animation. Thanks to his recent encounter with the Cybermen, he had automatically assumed that whoever had taken Tejana would most likely be hostile. But what if they weren't? What if they had been trying to help her? Perhaps they had placed her in a suspension trance to halt the progress of the venom until they could find a cure?

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the medical case with its two remaining ampoules of anti-venin. Given the extent of the poison in her system, he inserted both of the small bottles into the hypospray device. Then he used the screwdriver to trace around her still form, disrupting the stasis field, which glowed a startling blue colour and then vanished.

"What are you doing?" a clear voice asked in a disapproving tone. "You shouldn't touch that. Nurse wouldn't like it."

Whirling around, the Doctor saw the small, blonde girl in the next bed sitting up and regarding him sternly. But he didn't have time to reply, because Tejana's dark blue eyes had flicked open and she was sucking in a huge, tortured gasp of air, as though she was drowning. Without the protection of the stasis field, the venom had immediately become active again.

"Doc...tor!" she choked out, seeing him hovering over her. "Help...me! Can't...breathe!"

"It's all right, Tejana," he said reassuringly. "Everything's going to be all right!"

Pushing the hypospray against her neck, he triggered the device, injecting the anti-venin directly into her carotid artery. Her entire body went as rigid as a board in shock and then relaxed just as quickly. To the Doctor's immense relief, he could see the concentrated anti-venin already beginning to work. The dark smudges around her throat were receding in a tide, leaving her white skin translucent and unmarked.

She gave a deep, drowsy sigh, her eyes clouding from the strong sedative contained in the medicine, even as she reached weakly for his hand. "Knew you'd come," she whispered, before she drifted off into a healing sleep.

The Doctor curled his fingers thankfully around hers, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"What did you do to her? Did you hurt her?" the clear little voice demanded again. "You'd better tell me, or I'm going to start yelling as loud as I can, and then Nurse will come and you'll be in big trouble."

Still holding his daughter's hand, he turned back to the little girl. "No, I didn't hurt her," he replied. "She was sick and I helped her. She'll be fine now, after a bit of a rest."

The little girl stared at him with bright, inquisitive eyes. She didn't seem to be afraid at all, the Doctor noted. Which was probably lucky, because having her shout the place down could prove to be awkward, to say the least.

"You're a stranger, like her," the child observed. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. Tejana's my d..." he replied, about to say 'daughter', only to pull himself up at the last minute, aware that in this regeneration he didn't look nearly old enough to be Tejana's father. That was the reason she had always called him 'Doctor' rather than 'Father' whenever they travelled together, to avoid difficult questions from humans. Or at least, that was what he liked to tell himself, even though most of his earlier incarnations had easily looked old enough to confirm their biological relationship to anyone curious enough to ask. Pretending to believe it was better than wondering whether perhaps she had some other reason for not wanting to call him 'Father'. "Tejana's my friend," he amended. "What's your name? And how old are you?"

"I'm Alison. And I'm seven years old."

He inclined his head solemnly. "Nice to meet you, Alison."

"Why are you here, Doctor?" She bounced up and down excitedly on the edge of the bed. "Are they coming back at last? Is it time?"

"Are who coming back?"

She clicked her tongue impatiently. "The parents, of course. Nurse says they won't ever come. She says there's no-one left but the children. But we don't believe her. We know they'll come back one day and take us back to the surface with them. All we have to do is wait."

The Doctor laid Tejana's hand carefully on the bed beside her and moved to sit cross-legged on the floor, fully facing the little blonde girl. "Alison, what happened?" he asked. "How did you and these other girls come to be living down here?"

"The War, silly!" she giggled, as though he was joking. "It's not just us, there's twelve boys as well. Our parents knew the War was coming, so they made this place for us to be safe. They hid us away with Nurse to watch over us and they told us they would come back for us when it was over."

The Doctor stared at the earnest little face, horror crawling in the pit of his stomach, lost for words. These children had been down here since the beginning of the Time War? How was that even possible? The War had ended over a century ago. That meant that Alison would have to be well over one hundred years old. "Do you remember your parents?"

She wrinkled up her nose. "A little. I try very hard. Every night before I go to sleep I make sure I think of their faces, so I won't forget. I want to remember them so that I'll know them when they come back for me."

"How...how long have you been waiting?" the Doctor forced out, pity twisting his hearts, knowing that her parents must have been killed long ago in the terrible explosion of Time-fire that had scoured the surface of the planet.

The question seemed to confuse her. "I...don't know, exactly," she replied hesitantly. "Sometimes it seems like only a few days have passed. And then sometimes it seems longer, years and years, maybe. Why is that, d'you think?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "But I'd really like to find out." His gaze flicked down to her wrist, where she was wearing a golden bracelet with a large red stone. "That's a very pretty bracelet that you're wearing, Alison. Where did you get it?"

She shrugged. "I don't remember. We all have them, even the boys."

"Can I see it?"

"If you want." She moved her wrist towards him. Suddenly, the clock down in the entrance hall began to strike twelve midnight and the stone in the bracelet began to glow a deep ruby red. Alarmed, the Doctor looked around at the other beds. Sure enough, the scarlet light was emanating from the wrist of every sleeping child.

"Alison!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet as the clock continued to chime. "Alison, what's happening?"

She looked at him serenely. "What do you mean, Doctor?"

With a chill, he realised that there was a pulsing bracelet around his daughter's wrist too.

"Tejana!" he yelled, diving across to the other side of her bed, trying vainly to reach her arm.

But before he could get to her, the clock struck twelve and a ripple of temporal energy seemed to billow through the room. Tejana and Alison and all the other children shimmered like mirages in a heatwave and then vanished right in front of him, leaving him standing in an empty dormitory.


End file.
